Have you ever left the office to go on a business trip or on vacation and forgotten to set your Out of Office notification? Azurati has come to the rescue with the immediate availability of a new free HTML5 application called Gone Fishing™!

Gone Fishing is available on any mobile device as an HTML5 mobile web application and allows users to set their Out of Office notifications in Microsoft Exchange, modify the Out of Office message and turn the notification off.

Azurati developed the Gone Fishing app as a sample mobile web application to be published into the Azurati Mobile Portal™, an HTML5 mobile application container that allows corporate users to access corporately approved mobile web applications securely from any mobile device.

Here are some details of how the Gone Fishing app works:

The user accesses the Gone Fishing app through the Azurati Mobile Portal in the normal way. And chooses the Gone Fishing App.

After the user enters their mail box address, the Gone Fishing app then retrieves their current out of office message status from the Exchange Server. The user can then choose to turn off or turn on/update their message. In this case I already have an out of office message which reads “Gone fishing”, I disable my out of office message and then set it to read “Gone fishing to Alaska”.

Once an out of office message has been set, the change happens immediately on the Exchange server as can be seen from the test e-mail below. The Gone Fishing app can also be installed on the home screen, like other web apps.

The Gone Fishing app stores the user’s mail box in persistent HTML5 storage. This means that when the user next accesses the App, they don’t need to type in their mail box address again. The App also automatically retrieves the user’s out of office message status on start-up The App also gives the user the ability to clear all the stored data.

Offline mode. The App will run in offline mode, although because it relies on a connection to the server, all it’s functions are disabled.

However, the Gone Fishing app automatically detects when the status of the connection changes and the App is online again. At this point it will automatically retrieve the user’s out of office message status.

A new feature of this App is that is can automatically detect when a new version of the App is available on the Mobile Portal and it prompts the users to install the new update. This code can be added to other HTML5 Apps published by developers to the Azurati Mobile Portal container.

If you find it frustrating when you leave the office and forget to set your MS Outlook Out of Office reminder, get in touch with Azurati and we will happily set you up with our free Gone Fishing HTML5 web app.

Equally, if you are looking to deploy HTML5 web applications in your business, have a chat with Azurati about how we can help you manage your HTML5 web apps in our new secure HTML5 Application Container solution, the Azurati Mobile Portal.

Those of you who have been patiently putting up with the shortcomings of document editing on your iPads and Nexus tablets while you wait for Microsoft to release a mobile version of Microsoft Office®, will be sorely disappointed by the recent declarations of Steve Balmer and Kurt DelBene, the head of Microsoft’s Office division.

In short, you can forget about Microsoft Office on anything other than a Windows Phone or Windows 8 tablet. The same goes for the confusingly branded Skydrive Pro, which was announced by Microsoft in 2012 as being the new mobile offline client for Microsoft SharePoint.

If you have not been keeping up to speed with what is becoming something of a saga, Microsoft and Apple are in the middle of a major dispute over the payment of royalty fees to Apple for upgrades or paid subscriptions within in apps that have been downloaded from the IOS App Store for free. Essentially, Apple is saying that if a developer charges for an app or service relating to an app that was free at the time of download, they want their 30% royalty fee. This is something that Microsoft has found hard to stomach and so they have (for the foreseeable future) decided to eschew the IOS platform. [The lack of availability of Microsoft Apps on Google Play is due to other reasons].

Microsoft’s mobile SharePoint plans up in the air?
All of this means that Microsoft’s much lauded SharePoint 2013 mobile functionality with an offline mobile client, is unlikely to see the light of day. Even Gartner seem to be frustrated by Microsoft’s inability to get their story straight on mobile and had this to say in a recent research note:

“Microsoft hasn’t given much attention to mobility on SharePoint, and there doesn’t seem to be a sense of urgency around it, which is bewildering”

Fear not however, because companies like Azurati have developed solutions that provide cross-platform mobile SharePoint with on and offline working options and the ability to use full Microsoft Office to edit documents, spreadsheets or presentations live on any mobile device.

Figure 1: Users select ‘edit document’ in SharePoint2Go

Figure 2: Editing a document in Microsoft Word via SharePoint2Go

Azurati has integrated Microsoft Office Web Apps® into its HTML5 SharePoint2Go® solution, allowing documents stored in Microsoft SharePoint to be edited live and saved back to SharePoint without having to download documents to third party editing applications and then having to upload them back to SharePoint (sometimes with document formatting issues) at a later time. Its a really neat solution and gives users what they want: to be able to edit documents in Microsoft Office.

A new research study by Research and Markets published today shows how Bring your own device (BYOD) initiatives continue to gain momentum in the enterprise. Bring your own device programs aim to permit personal mobile devices in the workplace to access corporate systems and applications, like email and other enterprise systems.

The Research and Markets BYOD study is based on an extensive survey of enterprise organizations around the world and indicates that as many as 65% of organizations will have adopted some level of BYOD by the end of 2013 and only 11% not having any plans for BYOD in the future.

BYOD has its critics, who highlight security concerns and spiralling costs, with a typical native mobile strategy requiring the purchase or development of applications for each mobile platform and necessitating an additional Mobile Device Management (MDM) infrastructure layer to manage mobile devices and applications.

BYOD – a new way
With the rise of HTML5 as a standard, the costs of developing cross-platform mobile applications are plummeting but many developers are still publishing HTML5 web applications with native application ‘wrappers’ so that they can be accessed via public or private app stores and installed on mobile devices.

A new breed of mobile solutions, like Azurati’s Mobile Portal™, an HTML5 application container solution, aims to provide secure BYOD at a fraction of the total cost of providing and managing a native application environment. Azurati does this by providing a secure mobile portal environment that, when authenticated, provides users with all of their approved corporate mobile web applications in one location; without the need for Mobile Device Management infrastructure layers. Access to the Azurati Mobile Portal container is granted based on the user’s job function or role, allowing apps to be granted based on personal requirements and access to the Mobile Portal environment can be cut instantly if the employee leaves the business or if the mobile device is misplaced.

OK, so the news today that IOS devices can be hacked by following a now publicly available procedure to enable a user to bypass the iPhone and iPad password lock is seriously BAD news … particularly for companies who are looking to deploy IOS devices as part of an enterprise BYOD initiative to access corporate mobile applications.

It should be plainly obvious why letting an unscrupulous hacker into your ‘secure’ IOS device will be seen as a major security risk, particularly if your device includes applications that have auto-log on functions and can access sensitive corporate content or data.

Luckily, there is salvation for IOS users who want to have access to enterprise mobile applications

Users authenticate to the Mobile Portal container environment using any one of 15 supported authentication methods, including Active Directory Federated profiles (ADFS), 2-factor authentication, third party Identity Management solutions, as well as via third party providers, like Windows LiveID, Google or Yahoo profiles. Once authenticated, users will be able to launch HTML5 web applications from the Mobile Portal container with single sign-on.

If you are an IOS user and you are concerned about Apple’s IOS screen-lock bypass issue and you would like to evaluate Azurati’s secure HTML5 Web Application Container, contact sales@azurati.com and we will be happy to arrange a demonstration and trial.

Mobile Application Containers allow users to access approved corporate mobile applications from a single secure location, which can be wiped, if necessary, without affecting other personal apps and data.

In this webinar, Ronan Lavelle from Azurati will present the Azurati Mobile Portal™ – a new Mobile Application Container solution uniquely for HTML5 mobile web applications. This webinar will cover the following

The business case for Mobile App Containers for HTML5 applications

Mobile user authentication

Accessing corporate mobile applications on any mobile device

Single Sign-On

Publishing mobile HTML5 applications to the Mobile Portal container

MDM or no MDM, that is the question

If you are considering a cross-platform or BYOD mobile strategy and the use of HTML5 for mobile enterprise applications, this webinar is ideal for you.

Who should attend?
CIOs
IT Strategists/Architects
Mobile analysts
Business executives with an interest in mobile enterprise applications

Please feel free to forward this invitation to any friends or colleagues who may be interested in this topic.

Last month, we heard that the cause of the delay to updates to a number of Microsoft applications (like SkyDrive and SkyDrive Pro) on the IOS App Store was a dispute between Apple and Microsoft over Apple’s insistence that all app developers who monetize their Apps that have been downloaded from the Apple App Store pay Apple a 30% royalty fee.

For those developers who post free apps to the App Store, they have nothing to worry about. However, Apple is now starting to hone in on those developers that use the App Store as a free channel to market by publishing ‘free’ apps that later require the user to pay a fee or licence to the developer. Apple says that these in-app fees and purchases should be subject to the same 30% royalty payment as Apps that are paid for directly in the App Store marketplace.

This is a big problem for Microsoft and other App developers because Apple’s terms and conditions, which Apple states are uniform for all developers, require the developer to pay Apple a 30% margin on all in-app purchases, upgrades, enhancements, etc. – in perpituity; even if the end user switches to another mobile platform in the future.

Microsoft has found this condition quite hard to digest as you might imagine and now finds itself in a state of limbo as far as its portfolio of IOS apps are concerned. For instance, the IOS SkyDrive app has a new version ready to be deployed with important feature and security updates, but it has not been published to the IOS App Store yet.

Enter HTML5 AppsCoincidentally, Microsoft recently announced major new enhancements to its HTML5 version of SkyDrive, supporting swiping gestures and drag and drop features that many would only think possible with native device applications.

So, has Microsoft begun the process of by-passing native application App Stores to focus on rich cross-platform HTML5 mobile web applications? In reality, the answer in the short term is probably not, but they are certainly pursuing a multi-channel mobile strategy that will make the HTML5 option more attractive in the future, particularly if it means having to avoid costly fees to App Store operators.

In the enterprise space however, we see HTML5 applications having a much more powerful impact. HTML5 mobile applications are the only true way for a CIO to implement an all-inclusive BYOD or cross-platform mobile strategy economically and they do not require costly investments in Mobile Device Management (MDM) infrastructures.

Check out www.azurati.com to see how HTML5-based mobile applications are being used in the enterprise to transform the productivity of mobile business users.